Though Olympic fashion continues to revolve around flags and garish patriotic color, a strange undercurrent of hip infiltrated this year: jeggings-esque faux denim, a surfeit of plaid, and the world's most ironic mustache.

Though Olympic fashion continues to revolve around flags and garish patriotic color, a strange…
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French half-pipe snowboarder Mathieu Crepel sported the world's most ironic mustache last night. Let us count the levels of irony: (1.) Beginner's irony: It is a fake, black-ink mustache on an adult. (2.) Advanced-placement irony: It is drawn on top of his real mustache. (3.) Nationalist irony: A teensy, curling mustache on a Frenchman, at an competition that emphasizes one's citizenship. I was unable to find explanation for Crepel's stache other than (paraphrasing) "kid is weird."

The American snowboard team's uniform were either Cobain-era grunge (a gateway fashion to hipster) or the same outfit everyone in Williamsburg wears, but baggy and warm-looking. Designed by Burton, the snowpants aren't actually jeans, just "overlaid images of worn denim" via a fancy-pants (pun!) fashion technique called sublimation, explains ever-explaining website Slate. Ergo: Jowpants. At the flower ceremony for men's half-pipe, Americans Shaun White and Scott Lago wore theirs, while Finland's Peetu Piiroinen sported a jaunty plaid of his own. [AP pic]

Italian figure skater Samuel Contesti wore a plaid shirt and a never-before-seen feat of tailoring that Dov Charney is surely imitating as we speak: Faux denim overall leggings with stirrups and asymmetry. In this picture, Contesti even looks like he's yawning. Bored and disaffected, just like party photographer ordered.[AP pic]

Plaid and suspenders on Switzerland's Anais Morand and Antoine Dorsaz. You could even say Anias is rocking the shorts-over-tights look. Although I wonder if Burberry imitations should count; they strike me as tacky in a non-ironic way. [AP pic]

Though I originally assumed Czech figure skater Tomas Verner's pants were fake denim, the more I stare at them, the more I become convinced he's actually wearing bellbottom jeans. Lest the width of his Tomas' pants leave you unconvinced, here is American Apparel's "Sailor Shirt" outfit for comparison. But really, I just want to know how Tomas avoided crotch-chafe doing spread eagles in such restrictive pants. [Pic: AP, AmericanApparel]